Excerpts from Michael E. Berumen's book, "Do No Evil: Ethics with Applications to Economic Theory and Business," as well as writings on other topics, including animal rights, George Bush, capital punishment, Churchill, economics, God, liberalism, religion, philosophy and science.

Welcome Reader

I suppose it is kind of preposterous that one imagines himself important enough to write down his opinions for others to read. Chattering superciliousness is one of the most infuriating things about academics and so-called intellectuals, generally, who feel compelled to share their thoughts. But here it goes, anyway.

Abolish the Anachronistic Second Amendment!

For some years now, after one horrific mass-shooting and
another, many liberals begin their lamentations and calls for more reasonable
gun control with a de rigueurintroductory qualification, “I support the
Second Amendment, but…” or “I support
the right to bear arms and I own weapons myself, but…”Here are my own bona fides: I grew up around guns and
hunted as a youth with my father; I am an expert shot with an M-16 select-fire rifle as deemed by the U.S. Army, and I have the medal to prove
it; and I own a rifle and have it on display (empty of ammo) in my house.I also believe the Second Amendment is an
anachronism and ought to be abolished.The prescribed “right” to bear arms is by man’s law, not by any natural
law, not intuitively derived, and not
mandated ex cathedra by any Abrahamic
tradition’s sacred text.And prescribed
rights can be un-prescribed.

The amendment was part of the Bill of Rights, the original
ten amendments to the United States Constitution, with wording virtually lifted
from original state constitutions written before the Constitution (ratified in
1788). During the Revolutionary War era, “militia” referred to groups of men
who banded together to protect their communities, towns, colonies and, once the
United States declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776, individual
states. The Second Amendment is concisely stated:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

During the Colonial era, a militia was a group of citizens
who were not professional soldiers or part of a standing army, and who gathered
together as necessary to defend the community against untoward, outside forces,
and, more specifically, in the Revolutionary era, against the British.It was a common perception among colonists
before the Revolution that British soldiers of the regular army oppressed the
citizenry, and there was a general suspicion and loathing of standing armies
and centralized power.After the
Revolution, many in the country believed that a regular Army should be raised
by the federal government only when necessitated to defend against foreign
adversaries, and otherwise, that citizen soldiers armed with their own weapons
(slow-loading muskets were used at the time and well into the 1840s) would be
called when necessary to defend the local community. But it became apparent
that loosely-organized citizen soldiers were not up to the task against the formidable
British and its highly-trained professional troops, so the framers gave the new
federal government the power to establish a standing army in peacetime.So-called Anti-Federalists were suspicious of
such power, however, and argued that such a standing army would encroach upon a
state’s right to defend itself against tyranny. As a consequence, after the
Constitution was ratified in 1788, its principal author, James Madison, soon proposed
the Second Amendment as one part of a Bill of Rights (1791) in order to empower
militias and to prevent the federal government from disarming them by ensuring
that individuals, citizen soldiers, would be able to keep their arms.

It is convenient for supporters of the Second Amendment to
overlook the word “regulated” in the key phrase, “A well regulated militia”–––much
as it is for detractors to ignore the clause stating the purpose of a militia,
namely, its “being necessary to the security of a free State”–––which as anyone
knows who studied the period does not mean the freedom of the United States,
but of the individual states within it.Now,
clearly, the right for an individual to bear arms is undeniable by any literal
or historical interpretation of the amendment. The reason for arming the
individual is so the local community––a state––can defend itself against
tyranny. No serious reading of the history of the period could cause one to conclude
otherwise.With that said, the
amendment, though pithy, is slapdash and ambiguous, and was drawn without full
consideration of its ramifications, and, in particular, the changes in
technology and the meaning of “Arms.”It
seems likely that Madison intended the individual states to provide the
regulations for the “well-regulated” militias, and that surely would impact how individuals possess and use weapons
(as even Justice Scalia implied in Heller
v. DC), but unlikely that he could have predicted the types of weapons that
became available over the next two hundred years, including rifles,
semi-automatic and automatic weapons, portable missile launchers–––let alone
smaller nuclear devices or biological weapons. It seems unlikely that he would
have wanted just any citizen to own such devices, and yet, all fall under the
definition of “arms”–––and the word is not qualified or narrowed in any way in
the sentence.

The fact is that a state militia of citizen soldiers, as
conceived at the time of the Revolutionary War and the ensuing Constitutional
Convention, is an unlikely opponent against the full might of the combined
forces and armaments of the United States, today. And the picture of the lone individual NRA
enthusiast emerging from his survivalist ranch with his AR-15 to defend himself
against a stealth helicopter manned by jackbooted soldiers sent by the IRS or
US Forest Service with missiles and 50-caliber machine guns seems far-fetched
and even comically ludicrous.

The amendment is poorly worded.It does not account for modernity. So-called states’
rights were of course of particular importance to many of the men of the
Convention, and especially those who wanted to protect slavery and the
privileges it provided, which is to say, the men of the South. These motives
were gussied-up with talk of the dangers of centralized powers and local
democracy, but democracy could hardly be said to have been a paramount concern other
than in a very limited, privileged sense, namely, that white men who had
property should have a vote, which is to say, men like themselves. The
American Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th
Amendments to the Constitution, and several court cases and legislation of the
1950s and 1960s, settled much of what these men sought to protect and to
justify by “states’ rights.”And while I
do not discount the utility of local control and the advantages of plurality,
some things ought not to be
negotiable at a state or local level, which is why we have a Constitution in
the first place, for some laws ought to apply everywhere and ought to be very
difficult to change, not only to protect the majority of citizens, but also to
protect minorities against majorities. This brings me to my last points.

The Second Amendment has seen
its day.State militias are
anachronistic.Individuals do not need
assault weapons or nuclear weapons, or, in my view, any weapon other than those used for hunting or self-defense, and
then, with very strict limitations. There is a reason we have more accidental
shootings, suicides, and murders than any
other advanced society in the world … both per capita and in absolute terms, and
it is not because we are especially crazy or less homogenous or more naturally
violent or for other concocted reasons: it is because we have millions of more
guns, and compared to virtually anywhere else, we have unfettered access to
them. The evidence is irrefutable. All human beings are to one degree or
another naturally disposed to violence, something we aim to quell and inhibit
with civilization, laws, upbringing, and conscience. Americans are not uniquely
disposed to violence. I hope that in
time weapons will be abolished altogether, as hunting becomes a vestigial
barbarism consigned to history, and self-defense is conducted by other means,
perhaps even becoming unnecessary.Gun
ownership, itself, not simply militias, ought to be strictly regulated, and it ought
to be regulated at a federal level at a minimum, and states can be more but not
certainly less restrictive. It is too
complex an issue to boil down to a sentence or two or three, and because things
change in technology and society, it is best handled by statute, and not
addressed in the Constitution. Better simply to eliminate the Amendment in its
entirety in my view.

Now, I by no means believe that any of this is likely in the near
term; the firearms industry’s lobby is too powerful, and the notion of it being
an important “right” is too ingrained in the minds of many Americans, including
many of our ciphering politicians.But most
of these same Americans are older, and mortality being what it is, they will be
gone soon enough. Meantime, our youth are proving more sensible, not nearly as
oriented to hunting or the firing range, and they do not adhere to the faux macho
and overwrought notion that they need to possess a weapon to defend themselves.
So, I think it is something we liberals need to start being more forthright
about, a more vocal influence on youth who yet might live to rid society of
this specious and unnecessary amendment, and that we need to stop the needless
and often insincere qualification, “I support the “right” to bear arms,”
nonsense.Do we really?I, for one, do not.

Reprinted from Liberal Resistance

Michael Berumen is a retired business executive and
published author on diverse topics including economics, mathematics, music, and
philosophy. He has lectured to civic, academic, and business audiences
internationally, and testified before the US Congress and local legislative and
regulatory bodies as an expert witness. He has served on various boards of
directors. Among other things, he is the author of the book Do No Evil: Ethics
with Applications to Economic Theory and Business. A longtime Californian, he
and his wife have live happily in retirement in Colorado